B4 I Breakdown

The R&B of the late 2010s and early 2020s has a strong tendency to the dark and narcotic, but even by those standards, South Londoner Ojerimi’s third album is pretty out there. There is traditional instrumentation here — the occasional circling guitar or sax line — but it’s pushed way into the background, and most of these songs are a duet between Ojerimi’s edgy, chanted vocals and the trippy, snaking trails of brutally heavy trap/drill 808 drums. Everything is Gothic, shadowy, claustrophobic, hinting at or directly referencing oppressive mental states — but it’s still soul music, still sensual and grooving, still super potent.